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Staff Pick
Focusing on three strong figures — writer Mikhail Bulgakov; the beautiful, outspoken Margarita; and Ilya, a member of Stalin’s secret police — Mikhail and Margarita is a love triangle, a biographical literary thriller, and a paean to literature, a needful thing in times of tyranny and chaos. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
It is 1933 and Mikhail Bulgakov's enviable career is on the brink of being dismantled. His friend and mentor, the poet Osip Mandelstam, has been arrested, tortured, and sent into exile. Meanwhile, a mysterious agent of the secret police has developed a growing obsession with exposing Bulgakov as an enemy of the state. To make matters worse, Bulgakov has fallen in love with the dangerously candid Margarita. Facing imminent arrest, and infatuated with Margarita, he is inspired to write his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, a scathing novel critical of both power and the powerful.
Ranging between lively readings in the homes of Moscow's literary elite to the Siberian Gulag, Mikhail and Margarita recounts a passionate love triangle while painting a portrait of a country whose towering literary tradition is at odds with a dictatorship that does not tolerate dissent. Margarita is a strong, idealistic, seductive woman who is fiercely loved by two very different men, both of whom will fail in their attempts to shield her from the machinations of a regime hungry for human sacrifice. Debut novelist Julie Lekstrom Himes launches a rousing defense of art and the artist during a time of systematic deception, and she movingly portrays the ineluctable consequences of love for one of history's most enigmatic literary figures.
Review
"Drawing inspiration from Bulgakov's novel, The Master and Margarita, unpublished in his lifetime, Himes pens a whirlwind tale of romance and intrigue that approximates, if not exceeds, the talents of one of Russia's most heralded authors." Library Journal
Review
"Publisher’s Weekly described this as a "confident, carefully crafted" debut, and so it is. It looks at the affairs, both romantic and political, of writers in Stalinist Russia, looking at the intertwined lives of poet Osip Mandelstam and satirist Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as the Margarita who inspired the latter’s The Master and Margarita. A book about authoritarian crackdown on speech and satire that is sadly timely." Flavorwire, "15 Must-Read Books for March"
Review
"Adeptly details brutality and betrayal as well as creativity and the uncertainties of censorship..." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
About the Author
Julie Lekstrom Himes' short fiction has been published in Shenandoah, The Florida Review (Editor's Choice Award 2008), Fourteen Hills (nominated for Best American Mysteries 2011), and elsewhere. Mikhail and Margarita is her debut novel. She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.